Letter: Russia running out of gas

Aug. 10, 2017

To the Editor:

During his eight years as president, Barack Obama was confused and incompetent when it came to dealing with China and Russia, bargaining from a position of weakness. But, contrary to appearances, China and Russian have serious economic problems.

Russia’s “One Trick Pony,” oil and natural gas production and exports, is in serious trouble. Over the past four years with oil at $50 a barrel or less, the Russian national debt deepens as profits shrink. It was Sen. John McCain who once said Russia was a gas station masquerading as a country, a gas station running on fumes.

Monopolies succeed when there is no competition. The election of Donald Trump as president and a tectonic shift in energy policy has changed the paradigm. Trump has rescinded the Obama Clean Power Plan, exited the destructive Paris Climate Agreement, fast-tracked the Keystone Pipeline, removed roadblocks for hydraulic fracking and facilitated energy exports.

In politics and in the private sector, the quickest way to get someone’s attention is to hit them in the pocketbook. With the specter of significant oil and gas exports from the U.S., our nation has never been in a better bargaining position with the Russians.

The lack of business, economic and management experience, and the inability to successfully negotiate with foreign leaders over the past eight years, has greatly imperiled our own nation. But it may well be Russian ambitions of military and global expansion are running out of gas.